Building a media player with an MSP430

A media player based on an Arduino and SD card has been done to death several times over, but that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate [Matt]’s MSP430 audio player. It’s a very nice piece of work that supports a FAT16 file system and only takes up 54 bytes of RAM.

To make his dream of a 430 media player a reality, [Matt] based his work on the DIY Life Talking MSP430 project. Unlike this previous attempt to play music with a ‘430 and SD card, [Matt] threw in a full FAT16 file system, allowing him to drag and drop audio files on his computer to the SD card.

Right now [Matt]’s build can play a stereo audio file through its speakers, but the sound quality over a mono file is greatly reduced. The maximum sample rate is 16kHz; a ‘good enough’ sample rate if you’re listening with terrible headphones. In the video after the break, [Matt] plays this awesome Symphony of Science on his homebrew media player. We’re guessing his camera doesn’t do his project justice, but it’s still impressive nonetheless.

From “ThinFAT.h”
//*****************************************************************************
//
// Title : Thin FAT File System
// Author : Matthew Rogan
// Created : 22/03/2012
//
// This code is distributed under the GNU Public License
// which can be found at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt
//*****************************************************************************

beacuse some people with microcontrollers want to know the hardware and develop something they can deploy to a end product instead of sitting in a dev board and booster blahs.

I developed this for a reason, I have a younger brother that loves music. he’s got a learning disability and he has trouble with music players so people need to set them up for him but he cant even choose his music on them. then one day macdonalds do a bunch of one button music players that do 10 seconds of music and he was able to use them.

thing is he used them near every minute of every day and they all ran outta juice. so I started working on this with this specific micro to meet several important design considerations for him:
low power for constant use – MSP430
sealed, no batterys – use solar panel
waterproof – use capcitive touch, no buttons
play music – use an SD card

I’m still waiting for the panel and the orthodynamic driver for outputting sound. I’ve also been looking around for a nice see through box that fits nice in a hand 24 hours a day. enginnering is all about meeting design considerations. that is why.

Not sure if this is your issue, but make sure Step 2 is performed with the Power’ button (top of device), not the Home’ button. I made this mistake first time and couldn’t figure out why Voice Control kept launching…